Public Values in /justice

Justice as an institution safeguards fundamental standards and protects the conditions for exercising fundamental freedoms in society. The judiciary is directly bound by the rule of law. This means that the legitimacy of automation and automated decision system (ADS)-based applications such as predictive tools, online dispute resolution, automated text generation and facial recognition depend on how effectively their users operationalize and uphold public values.

It is the role of the judiciary to hold economic and political powers accountable and to reinforce public values in the allocation of goods and benefits in society. This makes the justice sector particularly suitable for studying the relationships between professional autonomy, institutional independence, and economic power, and to shed light on the institutional or organizational safeguards, procedural rights, and skills needed to exercise authority over ADS.

As the relational aspects of adjudication and judicial authority inform citizen’s perceptions of fairness, impartiality, and justice, the justice sector is also interesting for understanding the impact of ADS on democratic legitimacy. The key challenge for this sector is to define and realize public values surrounding the rule of law in the algorithmic society.